India for more than two decades has seen an altogether different niche class of society springing up. Well! They are the Geeks.

What begun as a trickle has eventually become a huge force to reckon with. We had (S)pecial (E)conomic (Z)ones coming up to cater to this industry and it seems that the facilities provided by these economic zones are finally being marginalized. There were scores of youngsters who ventured into this field to make a mark and were looked upon as zombies; for they were always in a world of their own. Hey!!! It includes me too.

When we began way back in the late 80′s, we did not have teachers/ professors to guide us. Basically it all came down to being self-taught and making a niche in the wide market. As days progressed, we realized it is an altogether world, full of deadlines, pressures, stress, defects, lines-of-code, reviews, and so many. We stopped count the tags associated with our field. Since India was emerging as a hot spot for providing solutions and cheap resources; we had no other choice than to meek down to the rather autocratic ways of the organizations. We were ruled with an iron hand. Our freedom was curtailed. Our world now consisted only of the 1′s and 0′s and the ways to make meaningful output from these 1′s and 0′s.  To make these 1′s and 0′s work and sound productive, we as solution providers, programmers, testers were always supposed to be in the 1 state, always ON, always ready on the go to address any issues, any deviations, any deadlines.

Our world was though shrunk through the means of electronic media, but our real world was reduced to just the a couple of square feet of space for our buttocks to entrench firmly so that we can get our acts together. In the eyes of the world, our friends, our parents, our siblings, we were the ultimate knowledge sources since we had the solution to everything at the tip of our fingers. We made life easy for them, with websites catering to banking, social networking and so on and so forth. Have they ever thought about us? Have they ever thought about the difficulties we encounter to make their world easy and accessible? Have they thought about the hardships faced? Have they ever thought about our health?

Nobody ever thought about it. We suffered and we did not realize. We lost hairs, lost our beautiful bodies to the endless sitting. We lost our health. We lost our freedom of speech. We lost our freedom to sleep. We lost our freedom to privacy. We lost our relationships. We lost everything.

What did we get in return? Nothing. The money we gained cannot the least bit compensate for the losses we made.

Nowadays, each one of us have been afflicted by stress problems, memory retention problems,  relationship issues. Our world has been reduced to just 1′s and 0′s. We haven’t thought of what lies in store between the 1 and the 0. It is a huge world in between we have lost, we lost without exploring and we paid a huge price in bargain.

I dunno, if my fellow zombies agree to this. These are entirely mine and my inner circle of friends views. We wish, we could find more of your support highlighting our problems and not let the world take us for granted.

SMTP Server Relay using Windows 2008 server 

What is needed?

•             A Windows 2008 server machine with a static IP address

•             IIS and SMTP service already setup on the machine (This can be done by “Add Features” functionality under Server Management).

Guide to a simple SMTP configuration.  

Refer to the figure given below.

First, create a domain by right-clicking the “Domains” node. You can see the domain name “your-domain.biz”. Note that it has been setup as a “Remote” domain.

Figure 1 - Creating a Remote domain

Now, add properties to this domain. Right-click the domain name and select “Properties” from the short cut menu options.

Figure 2 - Setting the domain properties

The properties screen is invoked. The screen contains entries that are relevant to SMTP setting for the inbound.

In the General tab, enable the checkbox labeled as “Allow incoming mail to be relayed to this domain”.

In the “Route domain” set of options, check the option “Forward all mail to smart host”. Note that we have given the smart host as “smtp.1and1.com”.

Figure 3 - Setting Domain Root properties

Once the domain property has been setup, we can proceed for setting up the properties related to the SMTP.

Right-click the SMTP Service node and select “Properties”. Here’s where we set the properties that related to the SMTP outbound. This will enable the emails coming in to be relayed and passed out of the server.

Figure 4 - Setting SMTP root folder properties

Go to the “Access” tab and click the “Relay” button to setup the relay restrictions. This will enable us to specifically lay restrictions on the relay in order to avoid setting up the relay server as an Open relay. An open relay is susceptible to spamming and unauthorized mails.

Figure 5 - Setting ACCESS tab

As seen in the figure below, the relay restrictions screen is invoked. On this screen, we will be able to specify the list of computers which can relay through this server.

You will notice the IP address for localhost added. This is mandatory, hence the entries for 127.0.0.1 and also the IP address xxx.xx.xxx.xxx.

Figure 6 - Setting Relay restrictions

Go to the “Delivery” tab and you will see three buttons namely “Outbound Security”, “Outbound Connections” and “Advanced…”.

First click the button “Outbound Security” and select “Basic Authentication”. Enter appropriate credentials as indicated in the figure below.

Figure 7 - Setting Outbound Security for SMPT outbounds

Click the “Advanced…” button to invoke the associated popup screen. Enter the appropriate details for the “Fully-Qualified Domain Name” and the “Smart Host”.

Figure 8 - Advanced Delivery settings for SMTP

Testing the relay server.              

In order to test the server relay, we will use telnet.

You will find a sequence of commands given below to be executed using telnet. The details given in the font courier new and set to italics/ bold denote the comments you execute using telnet.

On the command prompt type

telnet xxx.xx.xxx.xxx 25 (xxx.xx.xxx.xxx is your domain IP address and 25 is the open port number)

ehlo your-domain.biz (to verify the connect to your-domain)

mail from : myemailaddress@your-domain.biz

rcpt to : recipientaddress@other-domain.com

data (will enable you to type data below)

Hi,

This is a sample email

.      (period is used here to stop the data)

You will be prompted by an indication that your email has been queued for delivery

Now type

Quit (to quit telnet)

In the mailroot folder, you will find the resultant email in the “Queue” folder.

Once the email is delivered through your relay server, you will find that the “Queue” folder gets empty indicating that the mail has been passed successfully to the recipient.

The Chinese fishing nets (Cheena vala) is a common sight along the coast of Cochin, typically Fort Kochi. These were introduced by the Chinese explorer Zheng He.

The Chinese fishing nets have become a very popular tourist attraction, their size and elegant construction is photogenic and the slow rhythm of their operation is quite hypnotic.

These nets operate by being suspended for a few minutes before it is raised by pulling on the ropes. The catch is usually modest; a few fish and crustaceans which are sold to passersby within minutes. In addition, catches can be purchased individually and need be taken only a short distance to a street entrepreneur who will cook it.

This sketch was done on Dec.04, 2011 and done in 22 minutes.

Chinese Fishing nets (Cheena vala) of Cochin

Nov.28, 2011/ 11:20 pm.

Nov.29, 2011 has already been declared as a hartaal for showing solidarity with the people of Kerala on the Mullaperiyar dam issue. I had already taken permission from my Delivery Manager to work from home and only come to office for the scrum meet with the client.

I had the whole day of Nov.29, 2011 with me to continue with my work from home and also be at home with my family. I made a decision to get into focus and get into the groove rightaway. I began to build my mood for a busy night by taking up these sketches. I began at 11:20 pm. These are the sketches.

A Hindu sea temple at Bali

With Hindu influence in most of the asian countries, Bali in Indonesia was no exception. There are 6 to 8 Hindu sea temples along the coast of Indonesia with the sea goddess as the presiding deity. These temples have been built to create a harmony with the sea by calming down the wrath of the sea.

The sketch here is one of those sea temples at Bali. It took me close to an hour and 10 minutes to get this right.

Hindu sea-temple in Bali, Indonesia

Misty Hues

I took up this sketch on the same night immediately after my sea-temple at Bali. This was just an imagination with the background in dark and the hues of the tree created in white. Took me 13 minutes to complete.

My Imagination - Misty hues

Just after these sketches, I began my work/ task from home and compensated until 5:30 am and for the subsequent evening back to office. So there it was a relaxing night on this hartal day. I made the most of it.

A day in the life of a software professional is beset with tight schedules and deadlines. In order to make my daily grind interesting and fruitful; I sometimes do involve in doing 3 to 4 minute sketches to break the monotony. All the sketches are done on a business visiting card (definitely obsolete cards…)

Here are some of my recent sketches typically done in 3 to 4 minutes.

Michael Jackson, my favorite idol. I am crazy about him. His songs make me groove. Here’s my 4 minute sketch celebrating the greatest entertainer on earth.

Michael Jackson - The King of Pop

Living in Cochin has made me look up to the wonderful seascapes. Here is a simple sketch done in 2 minutes.

Kerala - Scenic beauty

Surveillance in the IT industry adds to the overflowing woes of the software professionals. Already hounded by deadlines and the constant usage of the gray matter; surveillance adds to the discomfort. Here I have a sketch to protest against this practice. It was done in 4 minutes.

Surveillance - Face the reality

Bamboo shoots. The favorite of all artists because it adds dimension to the sketch when you bring it to life. This was done in 3 minutes.

Bamboo Shoots - The favorite of all artists

I did this sketch to put down my imagination on paper. Hope it augers well with you. It was done in 2 minutes.

A Tree and Shrubs - My imagination

One of the many landscapes I usually see on Natural  Geographic on the rugged terrain of Australia. This may not seem to be out of Australia for you, but for me it does. I made it simple and downright blatant. It was done in 2 minutes.

The rugged landscape of Australia

I noticed this tree during one of my usual journeys. I was on the way to Chennai from Ernakulam and I happened to see this tree magnificent against the backdrop of a hill in Palakkad. I put it down on paper and here it is for you. It took me 3 minutes to get this down.

The magnificent loner - A scene from Palakkad

This is a sketch out of my imagination, of a tree in autumn. It was done in 3 minutes.

A tree in autumn - Reality of life

Metallica, my favorite heavy metal band. I put down one of their song posters “Justice for all” in this sketch. It was done in 5 minutes.

Metallica - Justice for all (Makes sense in the world today)

Selenium Regular Expression patterns are the most frequenty used and the most useful.

The regular expression pattern in Selenium is similar to that offered by Javascript. In order to use the regular expression, you will need to prefix each of these with regexp: or regexpi:

To test if a particular string contains our text, we can do so in the following manner.

E.g.

let’s verify if an input field contains the string ‘Abhilash Gopi‘.

The input field is identified as strName

What does the value regexp indicate?

You will notice here that the regexp is given as [Aa]bhilash [Gg]opi

It means that the resultant text could be found as “abhilash gopi” or “Abhilash Gopi” or “Abhilash gopi” or “abhilash Gopi”, in whatever form it could be with either A and/ or G in uppercase or lowercase.

I hope you get this well.

Your typical regular expression for email verification would be given as

Regexp:^[0-9a-zA-Z+_-.]+@[0-9a-zA-Z.-]+$

Another one would go like this

Regexp: ^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$

Regular expression to verify generic URL

regexp:^(https?|ftp|file)://.+$

Patterns, the magic input typically in querying scenarios. These are the basis on which querying can be made simple and yet powerful. In order to verify text contents of websites, it is equally important to verify these through matching patterns.

In a sense, the patterns will deliver the much needed punch to match various content types on your webpage. The entities that could be verified includes (a) Links (b) elements (c) text.

Most Selenium commands supports the pattern parameters. To understand this, we need to know the type of patters that you can use in your tests.

Types of patterns

• globs
• exact
• regular expressions

What are globs?

Since the days of DOS, we have been using globbing. What is globbing? Remember the days you were searching files in DOS by using the command *.doc or  De*.doc and so on. This is where you have used globs. So let’s see how Selenium supports globbing.

Globbing in Selennium is possible with the following set of characters

i)         * (asterisk)

• It is used to match any number of characters. E.g. *.doc will indicate a.doc or abhilash.doc

ii)          ? (question mark)

• It is used to match a single character. E.g. Pe?.doc will indicate Pet.doc. It supports just a single character.

iii)        [ ] (square brackets)

• Typically a square bracket is used to denote a class of characters or set of characters.
• [a-z] means a set of lowercase alphabets
• [A-Z] means a set of uppercase alphabets
• [0-9] indicates a set of numeric values

How to use globs in Selenium?

Suppose we want to find/ search for the text “region” or “regional”, then we could use it as reg*

In Selenium, that would mean the following

Attrition : A dreaded word for a manager who cherishes their relationship with their employees. Let’s take a peek into little techniques practiced by managers to retain their best employees.

Attrition happens when the employee feels that “The grass is greener on the other side”. So what should the manager do? The first thing is to make this side greener.

Making the side greener can be achieved by the right compensation. The right compensation includes (a) Cash, since some really need it (b) Other factors, by listening to their subtle hints when they do not have their heart in their workplace.

Here are some techniques to keep this side greener and ensure that the employee is content.

1. Create work opportunities and Keep them engaged. During the slack time, consider ways to provide the opportunity to the employee to develop their skills which are relevant to their area of work.

2. Appreciate a good job done!!! Recognize that the employee has put their best in a particular job and appreciate them. An appreciative manager changes the way the employee think and work. An appreciation goes a long way to stablize the relationship between the manager and the employee and make it effective and productive.

3. See, Listen and react to your employees changing needs. A manager should learn to recognize the employees changing needs and show sensitivity. It goes a long way to build trust, loyalty and stability to their lives, which in turn results in focussed activity from the employee.

4. Like the saying in the Harry potter movie “The wand selects its master“. It holds true for managers too. A manager should be proactive and drive the employees to reach greater heights and achieve realistic targets. A team thrives under a great leader.

5. Use the opportunity for performance appraisals to reward and compliment high performers and inspire them to do more.

6. Create the best possible environment for your employees. They will perform their best in such an environment and will be passionate about what they do.

7. Build a trustworthy relationship with your employees. The soldiers work hard and are happy when their commanders trust them. An employees keeps their eyes and ears open on the happenings around. This in turn, reflects in their heart the trust they maintain with a manager. An employee always trusts a good manager.

8. Maintain your productive field. When you reap the best seeds, there are bound to be weeds amongst them. Remove the poor performers since they stifle the good environment benefits and high performance of their colleagues.

Summary : Keep your high performing employees happy. This will go a long way to ensure productivity and profit.

What is Selenium RC?

• It is a tool that enables us to write automated web application UI tests.
• Typical includes support for languages as given under
  • Java
  • C#
  • Python
  • PHP
  • Ruby On Rails
  • Perl

Selenium RC Components

The basic function of the selenium server is to

• Launch and Kill browsers
• Interpret and run the Selenese commands
• Act as HTTP proxy to intercept and verify HTTP messages between browser and AUT

Let’s see the steps to write and execute a basic script under Selenium RC.

1)      You have already identified the scenario on your web application that you need to test.

2)      Identify the start point and end point for your script.

3)      In this case, I am beginning with the login, navigating to the home page on successful login and then returning back to the login page by a logout.

4)      I invoked the login page for the web application. (Refer to the figure given below).

Web Application - Login Screen

5)      I go to Tools >> Selenium IDE to invoke the IDE reference given within the firefox browser.

Invoke Selenium IDE in firefox

6)      Selenium IDE is invoked. Please refer to the figure

Record your Selenium IDE test

7)      Now click the Record button and record your script/ scenario.

8)      Selenium IDE will be populated with the resultant script instructions. You can see the steps in the figure given below.

Selenium IDE script recorded

9)      Once the script has been recorded into the Selenium IDE, you can run/ execute it and verify for its correctness. Now this script needs to be converted into the RC script.

10)   Go to Options >> Options to invoke the options setup window. You will find a checkbox entry labeled as “Enable experimental features”. Check this entry and click OK.

Experimental features enabled for Selenium RC

11)   Now you are ready for conversion to the applicable format as deemed fit.

12)   Go to Options >> Formats and select the C# format. Refer to the figure given below.

Convert your Selenium IDE script to C sharp format

13)   On selecting the C# format, you will notice your stepwise IDE instructions automatically converted to the relevant C# code.

Selenium IDE test converted into C# format

14)   Open Visual Studio and Select Visual C# >> Windows >> Class Library.

C# Windows Library invoked in Visual Studio

15)   Open the class library and copy the converted C# code into this class library file.

C# selenium test script copied into Visual Studio

16)   Now remember the things to be done at this point

1. Save the Class Library file
2. Rename the namespace (It is originally shown as SeleniumTests during conversion, change it to an appropriate classname.
3. Change the project name
4. Add references to Nunit dlls.

17)   The Nunit references for dotnet need to be downloaded into a folder from which you can refer to the associated .dll files.

Add reference to Selenium Nunit references

Nunit references added

18)   Now create the build by Debug >> Build <<classlibrary>>. The figure below shows the build carried out successfully.

Build successfully created

19)   Once the build is created successfully, we need to get this into Nunit for our test. As the build is created, you will find the corresponding dll created into a folder as illustrated below.

Location of .DLL after build creation

20)   Open Nunit and open the Nunit project by navigating to this resultant dll file. The figures shows the selection of the resultant .dll file.

Select the resultant .DLL

21)   Now invoke the Selenium server by typing java –jar <<selenium-server-jar-file>>.jar

22)   Once the .dll file is opened within NUnit, now click the RUN button to carry out the test.

23)   On successful test verification, the NUnit will show the results in Green. Please refer to the figure below.

Successful NUnit Test - Passed

24)   Incorrect results or dependency errors will be shown in NUnit as indicated below.

Indication of Error in NUnit

Once you learn how to get your SElenium RC scripts ready and working, you can work up to the next level by adding exceptions, writing output to particular folders and so on.

So the very best from me for a successful Selenium RC venture. Thank you.